Life offers you more drama than any fiction can.
Sanjay, barely out of school, was supervising a screen-printing unit his cousin owned. He had had no formal training in any kind of art. However, his keen interest remained in reading, drawing, painting, creating toys and in sociopolitical issues. As luck would have it, he encountered a newspaper owner. Looking at Sanjay’s drawings, the newspaper owner offered Sanjay the role of a cartoonist for the newspaper that was to launch a week later.
A little apprehensive, albeit excited and curious, Sanjay worked for the week to develop a cartoon style for the newspaper. He brushed up his knowledge of politics and society in India at large. On the eighth day, the newspaper came out, the cartoon pinched the people and quickly became a favorite. The cartoon column Tazurba was set, Sanjay’s satire and illustration style started to mature and was delivered to people daily. The central character of the column was Tazurba, an educated bagger, top naked, wearing torn pyjamas, who made sharp comments about contemporary socio-political situations with the passersby. Bursting with sarcasm, humor and ideas, Sanjay soon started his handwritten weekly satirical editorial Gutargun.
Unique to this situation, the inherent need to quickly gather knowledge daily and to think on his feet made Sanjay a quick thinker, good planner, and a diligent worker. Over time, his cartoons were delivered to people in three daily newspapers. He had a successful three years of political cartoons with the newspapers, yet life was to take another turn.
Radio silence is all Sanjay received having taken an entrance exam for the school leaver program in design from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, India. To evade being in constant gaze of his dad, Sanjay enrolled himself for the Bachelor of Commerce at Jiwaji University, Gwalior. The daily pocket cartoon and weekly editorial had grown to establish Sanjay as a cartoonist and a political satirist.
In 1991, Sanjay represented Jiwaji University, Gwalior, at the East/North Zone Inter-University competition in Poster Design and Cartoons held at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi with his unstoppable passion for drawing. He won the gold medal in the competition. This was the first-ever gold medal for Jiwaji University in the past 15 years. This event led to more competition and kept adding gold to the history of Jiwaji University. Sanjay again represented Jiwaji University, Gwalior at the Inter-University National Youth competition in Poster Design and Cartoons held at Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar and took the Gold.
In 1992, Sanjay brought another two gold medals to the Jiwaji University, Gwalior from the North Zone inter-University youth competitions in Poster Design and Cartoons organized at Nagpur University, Nagpur, India, and Inter-University National competitions in Poster Design and Cartoons held at Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai.
Gaining self-confidence from the above occurrences, Sanjay applied to the NID again after completing his Bachelor of Commerce.
After publishing his daily pocket cartoon column for two years, Sanjay went to meet the then Railways Minister of Govt. of India, Shri Madhavrao Scindia, to request him to inaugurate a cartoon exhibition. The minister said “Sure, next week?” which set an ultimate deadline for Sanjay to draw and paint about 50 of his cartoons in calendar size, find a sponsor and venue, make, and send out invitations. A crazy week of preparation ensued.
All was done in a week’s time as the cabinet minister reached the gallery’s door. Sanjay stumbled and ran to stand next to the minister in his dirty denim and originally white shirt. However, Sanjay had forgotten to arrange for a pair of scissors for the minister to cut the ribbon. He ran to the gallery’s garden to fetch a large pair of Gardening Scissors, which invited a burst of laughter from the assembled crowd. The exhibition ran for four days at Kala Vithika, Gwalior.
(Sadly, no pictures of those events are available except scans of some of those cartoons)
At his second attempt, Sanjay got as far as an interview for admission at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad for the ‘school-leavers’ (five years) program despite holding graduation in commerce. Seeing his creative work and academics the institute offered him a ‘Post Graduate Diploma’ (a 2.5-year program) course interview as well. He was interviewed for the PGD in a week and offered both seats to choose from. “What if we gave you admission in School Leavers and not in the Post Graduate course? You’d lose 2.5 years.” asked the interviewer. “I can live those extra years later,” said Sanjay. This led everyone to stand up and applaud Sanjay, who, before leaving the interview room, knew he was getting to do Post Graduate Diploma, specializing in Animation Film Design. (This was soon changed into a master’s degree.)
Sanjay joined PDG and the journey put him in transition from a cartoonist, and known political influencer to a design student, and a designer later. A completely new world fell open to Sanjay at NID for his intellectual being and for his professional skill. Due to financial pressures, Sanjay couldn’t have spent any additional semester’s fee. He worked diligently to finish the course in two years and two months. (Four months prior)
Courses taken: Sketching, drawing for animation, Basic animation, Character Design, Storytelling, storyboarding, sound design, animation to sound, Design Process, History of Design, Elective course with Channel V, Industrial training, pre diploma project, Diploma Project.
To make ends meet and to afford the increasing cost of stationery, Sanjay also started to take up part-time freelance professional work while studying at NID. He worked for Mahila Samakhya Gujarat, a women’s group working to improve livelihood of women in Gujrat by providing different livelihood training such as weaving, handicraft products, etc. He went around the villages of Gujarat with the women’s group team in his spare time to observe and photograph the activities at the actual sites. Based on the images, he came up with an earthy brochure and a logo for this organization.
Character Design was one of the major courses in the second year at NID. Three different ways- from real life, from description of a character in a book, and from a description imagined by self; were to be adopted to build highly animatable, and believable characters. The bone structure, the placement and contour of flesh, the attire, the facial expressions, mannerisms, and postures were to be imagined and be brought down to the paper.
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale -based on the description in a book, ‘Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi’s Last Battle’ by Mark Tully and Satish Jacob.
The leader of the Damdami Taksal (a Sikh religious group) and political revolutionary/terrorist is notable for his support of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. To impose a return to the ‘pure’ roots of Sikhism, he took up arms against the state and took the Golden Temple under his control. Operation Bluestar was launched by the government, and Bhindranwale, with hundreds of his supporters, was killed. Sanjay imbibed details of this described character, food habits, postures, attire, and his political patronage to come up with these imaginary visual depictions.
Character Design was one of the major courses in the second year at NID. Three different ways- from real life, from description of a character in a book, and from a description imagined by self; were to be adopted to build highly animatable, and believable characters. The bone structure, the placement and contour of flesh, the attire, the facial expressions, mannerisms, and postures were to be imagined and be brought down to the paper.
The class gathered to list down the names of the characters that one encounters in their daily life. By the way of picking a lottery, a character is assigned to each of the students. Sanjay picked the butcher.
Ahmedabad has a sizable meat-consuming community and big butchery markets. Sanjay went around these markets to sketch and interview butchers to get the feel of their looks, habits, and lifestyle. Sanjay then visualized the butchers’ various facial expressions, gestures, postures, and the butcher in various situations. Sanjay came up with a character that had the most common characteristics of a butcher.
Character Design was one of the major courses in the second year at NID. Three different ways- from real life, from description of a character in a book, and from a description imagined by self; were to be adopted to build highly animatable, and believable characters. The bone structure, the placement and contour of flesh, the attire, the facial expressions, mannerisms, and postures were to be imagined and be brought down to the paper.
Each student was to imagine a character, preferably with non-human characteristics, imagine its posture, its locomotion, its habitat, its bodily mechanisms, and its surroundings. Sanjay imagined an insect, Grapho.
Grapho is a fantasied insect character which lives inside an animator’s Lightbox. Grapho draws its energy from the bulb which is usually lit all the time. Grapho feeds on the graphite left by the pencil’s scratch on the surface of the paper. In times of desperation, Grapho sits atop the pencil and scratches the graphite off with its hook-type beak. The reversed horn-shaped, harmonica ears help it to hear the pencil’s scratching sound made on the paper surface, informing Grapho of a fresh meal.
This project was a part of an elective course where students worked with the industry at NID campus. The creative team of Channel [V] had a briefing session about the channel and assigned students to produce ten promotional videos for the Channel [V]. Two of Sanjay’s concepts were amongst the ten selected out of fifty such concepts. Sanjay produced one of the two selected concepts and used cel animation to create the promo.
The film starts with a cave painting. One of the stick figures comes alive and shoots its spear at the animal. At the collision, the animal’s bone makes a [V] shape with the spear.
In these times, teaching and learning using digital media was slowly taking roots in India. At the end of master’s degree, for the final project named diploma project, Sanjay worked to animate and produce part of an interactive digital English learning CDROM with Silver Leaf Software in Delhi. The story-woven software uses various situations to challenge, teach and examine the users’ spoken English skills through animated sequences, high-quality infographics, tests, and fun games.
A Professor is kidnapped by a pirate group and taken to a secluded island. A group of professional bounty hunters from different parts of the world are assembled and dropped on to the island. The group is further divided into pairs and is to make individual efforts to locate and find the professor. Various situations are presented to the bounty hunters to solve riddles using their spoken English skills and eventually finding the professor.
This project introduces Sanjay to computer based 2D animation for the first time. Computer technology was at its primitive state in India, thus a pioneering method of drawing with mouse straight on to the computer was adopted to minimize the weight of data that was to be screened with high speed. Sanjay made all the animations using Adobe animator pro. Later, Sanjay went on to teach computer based 2D animation at NID.
